de Machaut, Guillaume

Guillaume de Machaut was born in Reims in 1300 and died in Reims in 1377. Guillaume de Machaut was a French composer and poet. His dominance in this genre is so great that modern musicologists use his death to separate the Ars Nova from the subsequent Ars Subtilior movement. He is considered the most important French composer and poet of the 14th century and is often regarded as the leading European composer of the century. His poems were greatly admired and imitated by other poets well into the 15th century, including Geoffrey Chaucer and Eustache Deschamps. His distinctive, expressive, imaginative, and influential musical legacy lives on.